Bathroom Guideline Reversal Highlights 'Fundamental Problem With Society'

BALTIMORE (WJZ) -- The Trump administration's reversal of federal guidelines about school bathrooms removes the rights of transgender students to use facilities based on the gender they identify with.

Some in Baltimore say this violates their civil rights, and is a step in the wrong direction.

"It is not OK and we will fight and fight and fight," said protesters outside the White House earlier this week, moments after the decision was announced to reverse the Obama administration's mandate for public schools to allow transgender students to use public restrooms corresponding with their gender identities.

"You want to be in spaces that are consistent with who you are," Eli Sauerwalt, a trans student, told WJZ's Amy Yensi.

For Eli, the decision feels like another rejection.

"There was a lot of bullying from my peers my freshman year," he says. "I was beat up in a bathroom."

Under the Obama policies, states that restricted access to bathrooms would lose funding.

Now, states and school districts can come up with their own policies.

"This is not something that the federal government should be involved in," said White House Press Secretary Sean Spicer earlier this week. "This is a state's rights issue."

The issue sparked heated debate last year, when North Carolina enacted a law limiting the use of public bathrooms to match the sex on a person's birth certificate.

But to force trans students to use the bathroom matching their birth certificate, rather than their gender identity, "is saying to the trans community that they do not deserve the same sort of respect as everyone else."

"Our trans youth are still being left behind, and so I think that really does highlight a fundamental problem with society and how we treat transgender individuals," says Jabari Lyles, director of the Baltimore chapter of the Gay Lesbian and Straight Education Network.

"Particularly with the recent administration, there seems to be this hopping on the other side of all the really great things done by the previous administration. I think that our climate right now is very polarized when it comes to the issue and folks just really need to educate themselves and come together."

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